Uninspired

It is early Monday morning as I write this, about 5:30 AM. Friday morning I
was discharged from the Two-North Mental Health Unit at St. Paul's Hospital in Vancouver.
I had been a patient there for about three weeks.
I was brought there after
I asked a security guard to call me an ambulance.

Everyone seemed to agree that I was better and was ready to be discharged, but I'm
beginning to think that if what I'm experiencing is mental health, then I want no part of
it.

I knew well before I came to Vancouver that my success here would be determined
mostly by my ability to make friends in my new home. Before I was admitted to the
hospital I struck up conversations with everyone
I could. Being a very shy man by nature, I was surprised at how easy that was.

I'm not that way since leaving the hospital. I have hardly said a word to anyone
that hasn't been necessary somehow.

Further, I find that being in the hospital has hardened my heart. While I wouldn't
give money to Vancouver's many panhandlers, I responded to most by asking their names,
shaking their hands and wishing them luck. I could easily tell that I made more of
a difference to them than I would have with any money I could offer. I even bought
supper for a couple.

But the hospital has hardened my heart. Now I just walk on by.

My psychiatrist in the hospital seemed to think I was hypomanic when I was admitted.
Possibly, I don't know. It was not like other hypomanic times I have known. But it is
quite apparent now that my mood is far more subdued than it was then.

I was writing a great deal before I was in the hospital, and even during my stay there.
After my first few days they let me out each day on passes, and I would check my laptop
out of the lockup, then sit in cafes and write.

I couldn't sleep tonight, so I rode the bus downtown - the SkyTrain had stopped for
the night - with the intention of writing all night at a cafe. Instead I've mostly
been staring into space for hours.

I am uninspired. I have not a word to say.

I don't like it. I don't like it one damn bit.

It would seem that my crackup brought The Vancouver Diaries to an
abrupt halt. But I don't think they were the product of a fevered imagination. Not
most of them anyway. I think that what I must do is force myself to write, even when I
don't feel like it.

The other side of every single manic episode I have ever experienced is depression,
lasting sometimes for years. I cannot let that happen. I will not let that happen.

Depression is the easy way out. It would be all too easy to sink into it, and
then I would be doomed.

Read this essay online or reprint it at:http://www.warplife.com/mdc/books/vancouver-diaries/uninspired.html

This is a chapter from The Vancouver Diaries:http://www.warplife.com/mdc/books/vancouver-diaries